My wonderful wife wrote a gracious message on my Facebook wall for Father’s day. In her message she mentioned, “joie de vivre.” Not knowing what this phrase means, I headed over to one of my favorite resources on the internet, Google Translate. The default language for translations—for some reason on my Google—was set to Hindi. …
My method of learning new words in another language: repetition This is how I’m thinking of doing it: Method #1: repetition Have Google Translate translate an English word into another language. In this case, Google translated “great” into the Estonian “suurepärane”. Here’s how it sounds on Google. Click the audio button 20 times. Enter repetition! …
Learning one new foreign language word every day for a year Read More »
Want an easy way of looking through thousands of baby names on your phone? I tried to find a PDF online with girl baby names, but I couldn’t find anything. So I made my own. And now you can use this PDF too. Here’s how I made the PDFs. The U.S. government has a complete …
Those goofy cardboard sleeves around takeout coffee cups. What are they called? Today I learned they are called a Zarf. What an wonderful word. Zarf. How in the world is it such a cool word? Is that for real? Yes, it is real. Zarf is an Arabic word for vessel. According to etymonline, the usage …
The name for coffee cup cardboard sleeves is Zarf Read More »
Today I turn 43 years old. Then I find out that a retirement home chain tweeted my quote six times! A little ironic. Since it’s my birthday, I’m feeling older. And now retirement homes are plastering my name all over their accounts. Thank you, retirement homes. Now that I feel like an old man, my …
When a retirement home tweets a quotation from you — on your birthday Read More »
The Word of the Day by dictionary.com is wonderful. Every day features a different, interesting word. Recent words include: dissemble, dopester, bewhiskered, fillip, grumphie, and univocal. The graphics are nice and brief. A very simple digestable explanation is featured on the graphic. These little squares are so handy—and sharable. If you’d like to dig a little bit …
The curly thing at the end of a staircase handrail is called a volute. Any architecture ornament that is a spiral is also called a volute. Today volute is dictionary.com’s Word of the Day. Volute. Why are curly, spiral things called volutes? Is volute based from some other word? TO THE ONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY! The …
Google translates “Puns are illegal in Germany” into “Wortspiele sind in Deutschland illegal” The word “puns” in German is “Wortspiele” That is so much FUN! Word fun! Clearly, puns are NOT illegal in Germany. The very word for pun is a kinda like a pun. Or wait—does speile mean play? Speile is games. Speilen is …
I keep forgetting that I have duckduckgo set as my default browser. Just now I searched for duck puns in Chrome. Up comes the DuckDuckGo website with their duck logo, and “duck puns” in the search bar. Pretty amusing! What would be the equivalent experience on Google? It wouldn’t be searching for Google on Google. …
I LOVE ALL CAPS Some people love emojis I love all caps LOVE IT I wish there was a triple all-caps button OOOHHH WWWAAAIIITTT TTTHHHIIISSS IIISSS TTTRRRIIIPPPLLLEEE AAALLLLLL CCCAAAPPPSSS Hey, can anyone program something that will take text and make it into triple all caps? UPDATE: Yes! Here is a cool TRIPLE CAPS CONVERSION TOOL …
Velcro. Wouldn’t that be a great name for your child? Velcro, I’m stuck on you! I like to joke around with my wife that our 18-month-old daughter’s name is Velcro. Sometimes I’ll tell my daughter we almost named her Velcro. I love the name Velcro. But in our household that name will never fly–even as …
